


Caffeinated Ambition

by YancyPants



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Dorks in Love, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, flashvibeweek2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 04:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6839260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YancyPants/pseuds/YancyPants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cisco's inability to stay up late is causing him serious issue as he scrambles to finish a project for his professor Harrison Wells. Enter Ronnie and his brilliant idea to give Cisco his first true cup of coffee, brilliant being a relative term in Barry's opinion as he's the one left to deal with Cisco on his first caffeine high.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caffeinated Ambition

**Author's Note:**

> As much as I get the feeling Cisco's actually fine with coffee, let's be honest he'd have to be living in Central, I got this idea and ran with it.

“Whoa dude, you look like shit.”

Cisco stops banging his head on his desk long enough to look at the doorway to his dorm. Ronnie is standing there with his shoulder pressed against the door frame and his hands shoved into his pockets, the picture of perfect nonchalance.

What a punk.

“Well at least I look better than I feel,” he says and resumes thumping his head against his desk in slow, deliberate intervals.

“It's like eleven o’clock at night, and I know for a fact that your body clock knocks you out at nine most of the time so why are you even up?”

The desk shakes as Cisco pushes his rolling chair back violently and without warning. Ronnie pushes off the door frame to stand in front of his friend.

“Because Dr. Evil is hell bent on seeing me have an emotional breakdown before the end of this semester.”

“Meaning…?”

“Meaning,” Cisco says standing up from his chair that falls backward in the transition. The wheels clip his calf on the way making him grit his teeth to not curse at the man in front of him. “Meaning, Dr. Wells assigns some of the most ridiculous projects I've ever had to deal with. He's the only teacher I know that has made me want to quit liking physics.”

Ronnie claps his hands on Cisco's shoulders. “I told you he was a hard ass when you signed up for his class.”

Softly, with an exaggerated sleepy pout on his face, Cisco lets his head fall against Ronnie’s chest, the area covered in soft inviting green, black, and white flannel. “Your well defined pecs make a wonderful pillow, Caitlin’s a very lucky lady.”

Cisco should really call it a night before he embarrasses himself.

“You're a mess.”

“I'm exhausted.” He sniffs and nuzzles Ronnie’s chest more when the man rubs a hand against his back just between his shoulder blades. “I haven't pulled an all-nighter in so long.”     

Holding onto Cisco, Ronnie walks to the bed and lets the younger student crumple onto it with a thud and a slurred groan of protest.

“I gotta finish my work, Ronnie.”

“Later. Right now you are gonna take a ten minute power nap and I'm gonna make you some coffee, you have some here right?” Ronnie finishes, rooting through the various cabinets of the dorm’s kitchenette.

“Left cabinet above the microwave,” Cisco instructs from the bed. Despite his objections, he's spread across the mattress on his stomach with his arm hanging off the side, swinging slowly and his knuckles scraping across the floor. “It's Barry's though.”

“Barry the ‘Smokin’ Hot Roommate’?”

“Shut up, Ronnie,” Cisco says into his pillow regretting the day he ever told Ronnie about his feelings for Barry. At least Ronnie’s kind enough to drop the teasing and get back to the issue at hand.  

“Where's yours then?”

“Never been a big–” Cisco pauses to take a yawn that makes his eyes tear up adding to the agony of the ordeal, “–coffee drinker. My parents vetoed it when I was younger and I never really got into it.”

Ronnie hums and pulls the canister of coffee labeled from CC Jitters. Hopefully Barry, Cisco's roommate, won't mind too much. “Well there's a first time for everything. Take your nap I'll wake you in ten.”

Cisco's out and snoring before he has time to argue. With his friend asleep Ronnie puts a filter in the coffeemaker and rights the chair at the desk on the far side of the room. Sitting down on the other bed in the room, Ronnie pulls out his phone and sets a timer for ten minutes.

 

* * *

 

It’s now a quarter past twelve and Cisco is bouncing around the room like a jackrabbit on a trampoline with no sign of him stopping. And of course the minute Barry got back to the dorm to find Cisco jumping from bed to bed, in his shoes no less, Ronnie had something to do and had to leave. Which means Barry is stuck dealing with Cisco, a student on the first real caffeine high of his life.

“Cisco stop spinning in that chair, you're gonna make yourself dizzy.”

In an act of caffeine fueled rebellion, Cisco puts his hand out to grab the desk and use it as leverage to help him spin the chair faster. The room swirls around him causing everything to blur together, like how he imagines the world would look to a piece of clay on a pottery wheel. He loses sight of his roommate within a matter of seconds.

Barry sighs and pushes himself off his bed with a huff and stomps over to Cisco in the chair with determination. He comes to a stop just in front of the chair and waits for it to spin into the perfect position for him reach out and grab the thing by its armrests. One more revolution and Barry strikes surging forward to grab hold of the armrests. He hits a few knuckles in the process but succeeds in grabbing the chair and forcing it to stop.

The sudden stop forces Cisco to rock in the chair before he can figure out what’s happened. He looks dazed staring at Barry’s chest, the bright red of his tee shirt blocking his view of anything else in the room. It hangs loosely from Barry’s shoulders and sways with the fading momentum of Barry’s actions. When it finally stops moving Cisco is able to divert his attention upward to see Barry glaring at him looking more than frustrated at his antics.

And that’s when the nausea hits him. It’s not bad but certainly not great either. Cisco looks at Barry and pulls his lips down into a frown matched by his sinking eyebrows.    

Barry frowns back. “What?”

“You were right, I’m really dizzy,” Cisco says and shakes his head trying to clear it but only serving to make the nausea worse for himself.  “And I don’t feel too good.”

“I swear Cisco, if you throw up on me,” Barry doesn’t have to finish the sentence, Cisco gets the idea. It’s not really a problem anyway because the nausea is that kind of barely there twinge that’s uncomfortable but not unbearable. It’ll probably disappear when his body catches onto the fact that he isn’t spinning in the chair anymore. And he would tell Barry that if he could organize his jumbled mess of thoughts but instead he says this gem of a sentence:

“Don’t worry, man. You’re way too hot to barf on.”

When Barry gives him a concerning hybrid expression of confusion and amusement Cisco makes a mental note to remember that coffee results in the catastrophic failure of his already finicky brain to mouth filter.

The roommates stare at each other long enough for the dizziness to slip away. Cisco gets ample opportunity to correct his verbal flub in that time yet finds himself unable to do so as he watches Barry dissolve into laughter bowing his head into his chest shaking, causing the chair to shift along in his mirth.

“It’s way too early in the morning for this,” Barry says more to himself than the man in front of him. Cisco finds it to be a strange thing to say, though probably far better than what he’s just said but he’s not going to say anything for risk of worsening the awkward feeling tearing at his nerves.

Eventually Barry’s giggles come to a stop and he looks back up at Cisco, tears brimming in his eyes making them stand out a little more with the light of the room bouncing off them. They’re a stunning shade of green bordering on what Cisco would call hazel and beautiful if given the chance.

“Dude, you really need to finish your project and go to sleep. You know Dr. Wells doesn’t accept late work and if you fall asleep in his class you’ll never hear the end of it. Ever. Take my word for it.”

Now normally, conversation flows in a pattern of reciprocal phrases that actually have something in common relating to the topic of said conversation. As scatterbrained as Cisco is on a regular basis, he is well aware of how that works and does very well at adhering to this convention. Therefore uttering the phrase, “You have the most beautiful eyes of anyone ever and if your eyes were lips I would kiss them, like a lot, but they're not so I guess I'll have to kiss your actual lips instead.” is completely out of place and out of context for the other party involved.

“Um?” Barry straightens up and steps back a bit giving Cisco some space, looking away with his hand placed on the back of his next, his face turning bright red.

Cisco bounces his leg and taps his hands against his thighs in panic, nearly missing when Barry speaks again.

“Would you actually do it though?” Barry asks, decidedly not looking at Cisco.

Unlike his counterpart, Cisco’s head snaps to Barry fast as whip, or at least fast enough to give him whiplash. His eyes are wide and despite his best efforts his heart is thundering against his chest pounding at his ribs to be let out.

Cisco swallows slowly. “Kiss you?”

Barry nods and looks at Cisco from the corner of his eye. There isn’t too much of a distance between them. With Barry only standing a couple steps back and Cisco still sitting in his chair, fidgeting like he’s been training for it his whole life. Honestly, Barry’s surprised he isn’t back to romping around the room at this point. He saw the mug Ronnie gave him for his coffee along with the open sugar jar. Cisco’s guaranteed to be wired for a couple more hours.

“Do you want me to kiss you?” Cisco voice has risen an octave and his eyebrows have followed suit now positioned much closer to his hairline. He’s nauseous again, but it’s that nervous nausea that is infinitely worse than dizzy nausea.

Barry’s tugging on the hem of his shirt. His eyes flit about the room, bouncing from subject to subject before finally settling on Cisco, wide but resolute.

“Yes.”

Cisco blinks. And blinks again. The silence gets a little tense and morphs into awkward as Cisco fails to respond.

“Nevermind,” Barry backtracks, his resolve slipping away into dejection. He steps back a few more steps and looks away from Cisco. “Look just finish your project so I can go to bed okay?”

“Nah,” Cisco says, jolted back to reality by Barry’s harsh tone. He can still save this. “I’d rather do something more important.”

Barry rolls his eyes and crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Which would be?” It feels like he’s forcing the words through his teeth at Cisco, and yeah it’s undoubtedly upsetting so Cisco cuts to the chase. He stands up with a smile that feels like it’s trying to escape from his face he’s shaking so much.

“Make up for the fact that I froze just now, and maybe kiss you as an apology? And because I really really want to, if that’s still an option?” Whatever confidence he had when that sentence began slips away when Barry uncrosses his arms and smiles at him.

Time must skip forward because Cisco doesn’t remember Barry stepping forward into his personal space, nor does he remember moving forward himself until he and Barry are closer than ever. They lean into each other, eyes closed, lips parted.

Barry’s lips feel so much better than he ever would have imagined. They’re soft, and they should be for all the lip balm he has stashed everywhere, and after this Cisco can’t really tease Barry about that anymore, because hot damn.

Barry deepens the kiss, pressing forward with intent, bringing his hands up between Cisco’s shoulder blades. His hands are warm but send a shiver down Cisco’s spine that has him almost melting at the touch. And Cisco would totally love to go in for more, kissing has never been more awesome but uh...he might be seeing stars, and not because of the romantic atmosphere.

“Air, Barry,” Cisco manages to say when Barry parts his lips enough for Cisco to pull back. “I need to breathe.”

“Oh, oh, I’m sorry. I’ve just didn’t expect that to be, well it doesn’t matter ‘cause that was amazing I forgot about needing to breathe, I’m so sorry. Sorry.” Barry trips over his tongue like he trips over his feet; Cisco’s been to the track meets. He may be great at the races but good grief, practice is mostly Barry reacquainting himself with the ground like a child back home from boarding school.  

“It’s fine,” Cisco says, well more wheezes, he’s still breathless and fighting against the urge to stick his head out of the window to get as much air as possible. He’s already made a fool of himself  tonight, pushing his luck is a bad idea. “As long as we can be boyfriends now.”

Construction notice: Brain to mouth filter still under repair.

“I’d like that,” Barry says. “I’d like that a lot.”

If a person could short circuit it would look like Cisco right now, who has to contain himself from jumping through the ceiling into the dorm room above them, which feels entirely possible given that his body is now running on caffeine and adrenaline.

“I’d also like it if my _boyfriend_ stopped bouncing around the room, got his project done, and went to bed because I have classes in the morning.”

Not even five minutes into the relationship and Barry’s pulling the boyfriend card against Cisco. He can’t even find it within himself to be mad. Instead he steps back, clicks his heels together and gives a mock salute.

“Aye aye Captain Boyfriend, sir!”

Barry scoffs but smiles as he turns to his bed and leaves Cisco to his work.

 

* * *

 

“Cisco, are you okay? You look awful,” Caitlin says when he sits, or flops more accurately, down next to her in the lecture hall , a good five minutes late for class having spent them tweaking his project one final time. His eyes are burning and he’s never felt more tired in his life.

“Tell Ronnie he’s on my hit list and that I’ll kick his ass the next time I see him.” A small tortured whine escapes his throat while his head falls on the desk with a pitiful thunk. “I’m never drinking that much coffee again.”

Snores fill the lecture hall and cut their conversation short. Every student in the room looks around to find the source only for Harry, their professor, to beat beat them to the punch. He picks up a text book from the nearest desk and saunters over to his personal bureau, where Barry, his teaching assistant, happens to be dozing instead of grading last week’s quiz.

Cisco winces in premature sympathy when Harry raises the book to his chest and hovers next to Barry, a sadistic grin adorning his features.

The book hits the desk with an ear-splitting crash, causing Barry to jolt upward into alertness, his eyes red and puffy from lack of rest.

“Sleep on your own dime, Allen. You’ve got work to do.”

Barry nods and waits for Harry to turn around back to teaching before snapping his gaze to Cisco shooting him a glare that raises goosebumps across his skin. Cisco smiles cautiously and puts two fingers to his lips, kisses them and blows the kiss in Barry’s direction mouthing the words ‘I’m sorry’ with an apologetic smile at the end for good measure. Barry rolls his eyes but grins as he picks up his red pen to continue his task.

“Cisco?” Caitlin looks at her friend with her brow furrowed.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says with a wistful sigh. Dog tired though he may be, Cisco’s on cloud nine right now and he gets the impression that he might be there a while. He gives Caitlin a coy smile. “I’ll tell you later.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> A return to the awkward fluff I love to write.


End file.
